The PROLOGUE of the novie reads: The facts in this story are essencially real. Only by chance they were kept from happening as they are told here.
So, what was different? In what sense? How?
I need some explaining here, big time and I'm all ears!
Unless we have a messing up for no reason whatsoever, which is so latinamerican...
If pigs had wings the sh*t of this world would be perfectly shared
Well, I thought that meant the actual story is not true per se. I mean, maybe Beto did not exist or whatever, but the essential story happened... I mean, I don't know how to explain it better. The prolog thing did a fairly good job...
"Find out what to think next!"
-Chris Morris, "Brasseye"
What DID happen is that people ran up to their ears into debt believing that 50, 60, 200 thousand people would show up to see the pope... and I will stop right here because I don't want to spoil it :) Beto and all the characters, I guess, are fictitious.
shareYes, the Pope did visit Melo and people did mortgage their houses to buy food to sell to the crowd. You could tell that many of the interviewees in the film were real villagers.
I used to want to change the world. Now I just want to leave the room with a little dignity.
I think it's a good question, and one which I didn't think of until I read your post.
I too would like to know the answer to the question which I guess can only be answered by the film makers.
SPOILERS!
Well, it's not that difficult. The FACT per se really did happen, that is, the Pope passed thru Melo, staying there maybe one hour or so. Everybody went crazy thinking that it would be big business and in the end it was not. All that was real.
Now, in order to tell that in a fictional way, the directors/writers invented a character and his family and possibly friends too and wrote a story around the fact described above, using a lot of common experiences from people living there. It's my guess that he interviewed a lot of people, got sensitive to their stories and put something together that had a little from all of them.